Nathan Hale Part 9

The day's celebration was concluded by a dinner of the Society. Dr. Hale spoke on this occasion also. He said in part:

"Let us never forget that this is the monument of a young man--that he is the young man's hero. Let us never forget how the country then trusted young men and how worthy they were of the trust. It was at the very time of which I spoke that Was.h.i.+ngton first knew Hamilton and asked him to his tent. Hamilton had already won the confidence of Greene.

Hamilton was, I think, in his nineteenth year. Knox, who commanded Hamilton's regiment, was, I think, twenty-four. Webb, who commanded Hale's regiment, was twenty-two. When, the next year, Was.h.i.+ngton welcomed Lafayette, whom Congress appointed major-general, he [Lafayette] was not twenty. And Was.h.i.+ngton himself, before whom others stood abashed, had only attained the venerable age of forty-four. The country needed her young men. She called for them and she had them. It is one of those young men who, dying at twenty-one, leaves as his only word of regret that he has but one life to give to her."

Although it is now known that Hale was not executed near City Hall Park, in some respects there could be no more fitting location for a monument to him than this, perhaps the busiest conflux of human beings that anywhere crowd this great city. Thousands pa.s.s this statue, learning from it their first lessons in American history. Hundreds have stopped, seeing this bareheaded, dauntless man, evidently doomed to die, to try to learn whence he came and why he stands there, appealing to the n.o.blest patriotism--patriotism that must touch the heart of any man who knows the love of country.

Since this statue was placed, memorials of various kinds to Nathan Hale have been erected in several parts of the country. The schoolhouses in which he taught, although not occupying their original sites, have been restored, and are in possession of patriotic societies.

To-day Yale, endowed with buildings costing millions, is learning that stone and mortar, in edifices however beautiful, do not enshrine their n.o.blest memories.

Through a few friends of Yale, a statue of Nathan Hale by Bela Lyon Pratt has recently been placed near the oldest college building, Connecticut Hall. This building has been restored to the appearance it bore when Nathan Hale dwelt therein. Who shall say that the statue of the bound boy, facing death so manfully, will not prove one of Yale's n.o.blest endowments?

Still another beautiful statue of Nathan Hale by William Ordway Partridge may be seen in the city of St. Paul, Minn.

Happily, Nathan Hale's ability to die for his country is but one side of a Yale s.h.i.+eld from which gleam the names of hundreds of her sons, who, doubtless as ready to die for their country as he, had they been in his place, have proved their power to live for G.o.d and for their native land. Everywhere, in all quarters of the world, the Nathan Hale spirit of unselfish devotion has inspired the sons of Yale to the n.o.blest service they could render; and every man, young or old, who pa.s.ses the statue of Nathan Hale will realize that hosts have lived lives inspired by the same splendid spirit.

Nathan Hale himself went forth from his alma mater filled with the joyous hopes and ambitions that have filled the souls of many other men, all unconscious of the fact that the finest heroism and the highest self-sacrifice lay just before him, but conscious that he meant to be ready for the best that life could give him. He was ready; and the best of life for him was the power to die as he died.

CHAPTER IX

NATHAN HALE'S FRIENDS

(1) _Rev. Joseph Huntington, D.D._

A somewhat full description of the Rev. Joseph Huntington, D.D., is well worth placing among the friends of Nathan Hale. It was impossible for such a boy as Nathan to have been under the care of such a man as Dr.

Huntington, first as pastor and then as his private teacher in his preparation for college, without having been strongly influenced by him.

Indeed, scanning these old records of a parish of a hundred and fifty years ago, we cannot help feeling a strong personal attraction toward the Rev. Joseph Huntington.

Few men more fully prove the claim that many of the early New England pastors were eminently fitted to lead their people heavenward and also in the practical development of their daily lives.

Dr. Huntington lived a life evidently inspired by the finest ideals, and also by shrewd common sense, always so dear to the heart of a New Englander. It is a pleasure to recall the story of this man's useful life, and realize that besides the reverence almost invariably accorded to "the minister" in those days, he must have held the everyday affection and wholesome trust of his people. Year by year he proved himself not only their pastor, but a friend full of all kindly sympathies, never above a hearty laugh when mirth was rampant, or a sympathetic tear for hearts wrung with anguish.

He was born in Windham, Connecticut, in 1735. His ancestors came from England about 1640 and the family ultimately settled in Windham. His father, a man of somewhat arbitrary character, had determined that Joseph should be a clothier, and forced him to remain in that business until he was twenty-one. His intellectual ability was thought to be somewhat remarkable, and his moral character so good that his pastor advised him to begin a course of study for the ministry. He completed his preparation for Yale College in an unusually short time, and was graduated there in the year 1762.

His call to be settled over the First Church in Coventry was received so soon after his graduation that we are forced to believe that his theological course must have been brief. The parish in Coventry had been greatly reduced in numbers. The meeting-house had been allowed to go to decay, and the religious life of the parish was in a corresponding state of depression. His ordination services were held out of doors,--whether because the a.s.semblage was too large for the church, or because the building was too dilapidated, does not appear. The first thing Mr. Huntington did after his settlement was to urge upon his people the project of building a new meeting-house. They responded so heartily that in a short time they had built the best church in the whole region, having expended for it about five thousand dollars--a large sum in those days.

Dr. Huntington does not appear to have been a laborious student. He had few books of his own, largely depending upon borrowing. But he had a remarkable memory and the power of so making his own whatever he read that his scholars.h.i.+p and his originality appear never to have been questioned. The Rev. Daniel Waldo says of him that he was rather above the middle height, slender and graceful in form, and that he seemed to have had an instinctive desire to make everybody around him happy. This, added to his uniform politeness, caused him to be very popular in general society.

The Rev. Mr. Waldo adds that Dr. Huntington was fond of pleasantry and gives this instance:

A very dull preacher who had studied theology with him was invited by his people to resign, and they paid him for his services chiefly in copper coin. On telling Dr. Huntington how he had been paid, he was advised to go back and preach a farewell sermon from the text, "Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil." Many such anecdotes and repartees of Dr. Huntington were current in Coventry for years after his death.

This brief summary of Dr. Joseph Huntington's life shows that the men to whom Richard Hale intrusted the preparation of his three sons for entering Yale was not only a Christian, but a gentleman of the finest culture. He was able not only to impart to Enoch, Nathan and David Hale the rudiments of scholars.h.i.+p requisite for entering Yale, but to inspire such boys with the keenest appreciation of courtesy, broad mental endowments, and a wholesome zeal for high public service.

The correspondence concerning the Union School in New London shows that Dr. Huntington gave Nathan Hale the necessary recommendation for the place. It is on record in Hale's diary that on December 27, 1775, the day after his arrival home from Camp Winter Hill, he visited Dr.

Huntington; and in one of his New York letters he wrote, "I always with respect remember Mr. Huntington and shall write to him if time permits."

Admitting that Nathan Hale's father and mother were his most important early friends, we believe that Dr. Huntington, as pastor, tutor, and friend during the six years before Nathan entered college, may have stood not far behind the parents in deep influence upon his character--that splendid character, destined to be one of the beacon lights of our country's history.

(2) _Alice Adams_

Studying the lives of the founders of our republic, we are interested in noting the early marriages that so often occurred, and which seem to have been justified by the early mental maturity of the young men and women in the eighteenth century.

With early marriage, large families were the rule and not the exception; and eulogize the forefathers of New England as much as one may, no one at all familiar with the lives of the mothers of those generations can question the share that the foremothers had in broadening the lives and inspiring the characters of the husbands and sons in that early period. Nathan Hale showed the power of heredity, and Alice Adams, the woman he is said to have loved, proved well that she too had come of no unworthy stock.

It has been given few women to be so worthily loved as was Alice Adams, from the time we catch our first glimpse of her till the last, in her eighty-ninth year. She was born in June, 1757. Her mother married Deacon Hale when Alice was in her thirteenth year. We do not know when Alice first met Nathan Hale; but we do know that while both were very young they found out that they loved each other, and proceeded to engage themselves without consulting their elders. Nathan had several years of work preparatory to his profession still before him, and, acting as they supposed in the best interests of both the boy and the girl, the mother and elder sister Sarah promptly discouraged the engagement and it was broken.

In February, 1773, while Nathan was still at Yale and before she was sixteen, Alice was married to Elijah Ripley, a prosperous merchant at Coventry. Within two years Mr. Ripley died, aged twenty-eight, leaving behind him a little son, also named Elijah, who died in his second year.

After Mr. Ripley's death, Mrs. Ripley with her baby boy returned to Deacon Hale's home almost as an adopted daughter, comfortably provided for by the estate of her late husband. A member of the Hale family, she must have seen that whatever was true of Nathan Hale in the days when they were boy and girl together, he, now a Yale graduate and a man among men, first as teacher and then as soldier, was even more worthy of her love than in their early days. It is probable that they corresponded more or less, though happily none of the letters of either are preserved for the curious to delight in. All we know is that in December, 1775, a year after her husband's death, Nathan Hale stopped in Coventry while absent from camp on army business, and the broken engagement has been said to have been then renewed, this time without opposition.

Having been married and widowed, and having lost her little son, Alice Adams Ripley was now free to listen to the claims of the first love that had entered her heart. What the few brief months that remained to Nathan Hale must have meant to Alice Ripley, believing in him and caring for him, only the n.o.blest women can comprehend.

In regard to the letters written by Nathan Hale on the morning of his execution, one of these letters is said to have been written to his mother. One or two of his biographers have inferred that this must be an error, and that it was written to his father or to a brother. With the natural delicacy always so conspicuous in him, a letter to his "mother," so called, in reality the mother of one whom we believe to have been his betrothed wife, Alice Adams Ripley, who would show it to Alice and undoubtedly give it to her, was probably what he would have written. The others would know what he had written, but Alice Adams would doubtless possess the letter.

Alice Adams was to live many, many years, to become one of the most notable women in the city in which she dwelt; so honored that a copy of her portrait has long hung in the Athenaeum, Hartford's finest shrine for such portraits.

It was said of her that for several years after Nathan's death she had no intention of marrying, but, after a widowhood of ten years, events--some say changed circ.u.mstances--led her to accept an offer of marriage from William Lawrence, of Hartford, which was thenceforth her home. For many years she was naturally a.s.sociated with the social life of that city.

Whatever letters may have pa.s.sed between Nathan Hale and Alice Adams Ripley, no trace of them remains to-day. For this we can only be grateful that, unlike other unfortunate lovers,--Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browing, for instance,--not one word remains of their correspondence. That belonged to him and to her alone. It is fortunate that no mere curiosity hunter can feast his eyes or gossip over the words these two people wrote to each other.

To Alice's husband Nathan's father gave the powder horn she once spoke of as having seen Nathan working upon in his customary intense fas.h.i.+on, "doing that one thing as if there was nothing else to be thought of at that time." Its being given to Mr. Lawrence by Nathan's father, to whom it must have been dear, proves that Mr. Lawrence, as well as his wife, was a welcome addition to the Hale family. Mr. Lawrence in turn gave it to his son William, and it is now treasured by the Connecticut Historical Society.

Mrs. Lawrence lived well into the nineteenth century, dying in 1845, in her eighty-ninth year. She was thoroughly appreciated in Hartford, but it is from the pen of a granddaughter, in a note written to the Hon. I.

W. Stuart, that the best description of Mrs. Lawrence is given. Speaking of her grandmother she said: "In person she was rather below the middle height, with full, round figure, rather pet.i.te. She possessed a mild, amiable countenance in which was reflected that intelligent superiority which distinguished her even in the days of Dwight, Hopkins, and Barlow in Hartford--men who could appreciate her, who delighted in her wit and work, and who, with a coterie of others of that period who are still in remembrance, considered her one of the brightest ornaments of their society.

"A fair, fresh complexion ... bright, intelligent, hazel eyes, and hair of a jetty blackness, will give you some idea of her looks--the crowning glory of which was the forehead that surpa.s.sed in beauty any I ever saw, and was the admiration of my mature years. I portray her, with the exception of the hair, as she appeared to me in her eighty-eighth year.

I never tired of gazing on her youthful complexion--upon her eyes which retained their youthful l.u.s.ter unimpaired, and enabled her to read without any artificial aid; and upon her hand and arm, which, though shrunken much from age, must in her younger days have been fit study for a sculptor.

"Her character was everything that was lovely. A lady who had known her many years, writing to me after her death, says, 'Never shall I forget her unceasing kindness to me, and her n.o.ble and generous disposition.

From my first acquaintance with her, and amid all the varied trials through which she was called to pa.s.s, I had ever occasion to admire the calm and christian spirit she uniformly exhibited. To _you_ I will say it, I never knew so faultless a character--so gentle, so kind. That meek expression, that affectionate eye, are as present to my recollection now as though I had seen them but yesterday.'

"Such is the language of one who had known her long and well and whose testimony would be considered more impartial than that of one who like myself had been the constant recipient of her unceasing kindness and affection."

When she died, the story of the early home of the Hales found its completion. Shall we pity them or congratulate them that in those long ago days so many sorrows came to them?--testing their strength, developing their faith, and fitting them, as their days went by, for life and service beyond.

The following chivalric poem was written by Nathan Hale--perhaps in camp. It expresses his mental as well as emotional appreciation of Alice Adams. It is here given exactly as it appears in the original ma.n.u.script, with almost no punctuation marks. It is probable that this is a first rough draft, intended to be improved at some future time.

There are marks on the margin of the paper which show that the writer had possible alterations in mind.

TO ALICIA

Alicia, born with every striking charm The eye to ravish or the heart to warm Fair in thy form, still fairer in thy mind With beauty wisdom sense with sweetness join'd Great without pride, & lovely without Art Your looks good nature words good sense impart Thus formed to charm Oh deign to hear my song Whose best whose sweetest strains to you belong.